Skepticism

EVENTS

Just write off America for the next few years

The Republicans now control congress. That means nothing will get done for the next couple of years as the conservatives try to roll back slight progressive gains, and liberals struggle to keep them in check. You can just ignore us for a while, World.

Except for the drones and the bombs and the aircraft carriers, that is.

We live in a country where 42 percent of adults say they believe in ghosts, 36 percent say they believe in creationism, 36 percent say they believe in UFOs, 29 percent say they believe in astrology. And those people vote.

The people have the government they deserve.

Frankly, it won’t affect me much. The Republicans aren’t going to lower my taxes, nor raise them (my state legislature did that last year so that the really rich guys could get another solid gold toilet for their third yacht). My health insurance isn’t through the ACA. My community isn’t anywhere near where fracking would be profitable. And no one in my immediate circle is likely to need a therapeutic abortion (or an elective one) anytime soon. Global warming? I’ll be long dead by the time Miami drowns. So…I’m good.

You have my condolences: I understand the feeling because our president is currently a vulgar drunken wreck who is all buddies with the Russians and Chinese and wont be gone for another few years either. Try not to start another war and please at least choose another half-competent president next time. Until then we’ll be watching from over here.

Not to worry. Things need to get worse before people wake the fuck up, that’s all.

We Americans have proven we can do great and just things, like the civil rights act, environmental and labor laws, etc. We can do great things again for everyone, not just the Cock Brothers and their ilk.

The forces of the American Taliban are unsustainable, as more folks who are not like them are born or immigrate. The more they screw over the majority, the closer they get to getting the boot for a good long time. They will (eventually) fail.

Nothing is the best case scenario. Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to wimp out when the time comes.

There will be a serious run at impeachment. See how many “Blue Dogs” hop on board.
There will be endless attempts to defund/repeal Obamacare; if you aren’t slightly worried that some nonsensical hissy fit about women’s issues (birth control, abortion…etc.) causes a dozen Democrats to jump on some amendment…I don’t think you know the Democratic Party.

How will the next 2 years be different from the last 2 years? Previously, the Republican House and Democratic Senate refused to pass each other’s bills. Now Obama will veto bills that come from the Republican Congress. Or the Democrats in the Senate might filibuster the bills instead so Obama doesn’t have to veto them. Either way, nothing will continue to happen.

This might affect Obama’s ability to nominate agency heads and lower level federal judges that no longer can be filibustered, but as far as I can tell that’s about the only change.

As I said 4 years ago, the best way to understand American politics is to start with the assumption that The Republican party is a Chinese Communist front organisation aimed at destroying the US.Can I congratulate the PRC on it successful ploy.
My advice to most “liberal” americans is, stop whining and Organise-seize control of the Democratic party and move it left wards. Do not say “we cant” or “It won’t work here” get out and try.

futurechemist @ 11
As near as I can tell, that was already happening, with Republicans trying to delay as many appointments as they could. Now it’s easier.

Interestingly, Melissa over at Shakesville points out that most of the direct ballot measures that passed were progressive, and many regressive ones failed. So it may be that a majority of Americans* want things like minimum wage hikes and don’t want things like fetal personhood, but haven’t quite figured out how to get those with elected officials. (Or else the Democratic party can’t figure out how to find people who support these things, convince people they will get these things if they elect Democrats, and get candidates elected and things passed.)

* And not even only ‘blue state’ Americans. Nebraska raised minimum wage, and Nebraska isn’t exactly a bastion of progressivism.

Most democrats did not run on principle but on getting to an office. They are not for the healthcare, not for the environment and stemming climate change, not for the immigration reform, not for equal pay, not for raising minimum wages… They are all for guns and pipelines, and shutting down planned parenthood. If they got beaten up, I guess they deserved it. I hated Sinner’s strategy in ND and I hated Peterson’s smug gunners attitude in MN. I wish Colin Peterson was ousted too.

Wait, it’s not simple sentences, it’s simple concepts. I never knew that congress referred in aggregate to the senate and the house. For whatever reason I always thought it was just another term for the house, some kind of americanism.

If Democrats hold strong, filibuster when necessary, and generally stand up for Social Security, ACA…etc., then it won’t be any different. There will be annoying little things, like changes to Senate procedure, but nothing important can really happen.

If they take “lessons” from this ridiculously slanted mid-term senate map and start declaring that the American people oppose Obama’s radical agenda, then a number of them may get on board with “centrist” policies that revolve around the further erosion of social programs.

I wish I didn’t think this was a legitimate possibility. Republicans ran on Democrats trying to cut Social Security and Medicare, and now they will go out of their way to force the same thing, but somehow when a Republican wants to destroy a federal program, that means “saving” it.

@AndrewD (#13) I hate to even go there. I’ve seen too much anti-Chinese fear mongering lately. Grimes’ campaign adds included fear shots of McConnell* pointing out that he’s said nice things about China. Like Senators aren’t allowed to be diplomatic? And the problem is that I want to run with your joke and point out how McConnell married into a Chinese shipping magnate’s family, but I keep coming up against it leading me into xenophobic territory. Not that your comment goes there, it’s just that when I start following the logic, that’s where I end up.

I’ve been an American expat for about seven years now. It’s curious how the longer I’m away, the less inclined I feel to move back. It’d be a much easier decision if not for still having friends and loved ones in the US and the knowledge that, no matter where I land, every country is dealing with nincompoops and would-be dictators in charge at some level. I just wish the ones in the land of my birth didn’t have such an outsized influence on the rest of the planet.

Except for the drones and the bombs and the aircraft carriers, that is.

Of course, it should give you pause to think that, since 2009, the “drones and the bombs and the aircraft carriers” are all out there committing murder under the control of the “liberals”. Obama could have stopped all that. He hasn’t. The Democratic Party has been happy to let him.

The only difference a Republican Senate will make, at this point, is that America will race a little faster into disaster than it otherwise was doing; the Democrats differ in practice (as opposed to rhetoric) only by how fast they want to screw everyone over. Yes, it’s probably preferable to walk up the mountain to jump off a cliff, as opposed to driving, but both courses are ultimately suicidal.

Not to worry. Things need to get worse before people wake the fuck up, that’s all.

Yeah, why worry about the people who die/get thrown into prison/live in poverty/lose abortion access in the meantime, right?

Looks like the GOP playing the race card actually worked. From what I’ve seen white women were more interested in keeping their white privilege than getting more gender equality. And well, most white men want to keep all their privilege, of course, even those who don’t have much of it…

I don’t know why anyone is surprised, we now have an electorate that cannot understand very simple arguments. From “lipstick on a pig” to “you didn’t build that” to Tom Harkin’s noncomparison of Joni Ernst to Taylor Swift, to Mary Landrieu noting that racism and sexism exist in the south, we have become Idiocracy. For the love of all the nonexistence gods, the new majority leader of the Senate ran on a platform that amounted to “You can keep the doorway, but I’m for demolishing the house”, when he (or any other candidate) would stoop to giving us their position on anything. The new party in power won on “You said something dumb, and you love Obama”. Thenews media is no help, the coverage was about 60% horserace, 30% complete idiocy (see above), and about 10% actual analysis of (gasp) issues and the politicians stances on them.

We are so fucked. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that this go-round was heavily in red states with an unpopular president. 2016 has to be better.

Why should it be preferable, The Vicar, to walk rather than hurtle? Like a sadistic nurse slowly removing a band-aid, it only increases the suffering. Think of the horror for those who must watch the crawl to that cliff!

And taking a break from a literary dance, those who must watch are, in fact, those being murdered with bullets and bombs by American forces. The rest of us get to suffer to varying degrees in other ways, but when the damage is the same, really the only preferable thing is to end it soon, and not with annihilation, but by bloody stopping.

@Vicar (#26) – You’re generally right, of course, but consider this. The Democrats (let’s not call them liberals, Obama and many in Congress are hardly liberal) in control have used drone strikes and bombs in a limited way. I don’t agree with what they’re doing, but if the Republicans were in charge we’d have a full scale re-invasion of Iraq going on right now. And frankly, part of the reason Republicans did so well is that Americans are looking at the Middle East in terror and would feel at least a little more settled about it if we had launched a full scale invasion. That’s part of the message the voters just sent to a Republican Party that already supports invasion. Things can indeed get much, much worse with Republicans holding more power. And that’s just about the bombs.

I’ll point out again that if you’re any kind of minority in America, a woman, gay, black, hispanic, tcor if you’re poor, then having the Republicans in control could be downright disastrous. There’s also the effect of Republican legislation on foreign aid. Consider that no one receiving American aid money is allowed to mention abortion when dealing with say, rape victims in a foreign country. Remember also that Republicans and their religious leaders have supported anti-gay legislation in Uganda.

Oh, and I think global climate change is an international issue. We haven’t done nearly enough, but we’ve actually had real action that is reducing our carbon emissions under Obama. You can forget about that with Republicans in power.
Yes, we’re still stupidly dropping bombs on the Middle East. I’d love to change that. But don’t ever think Republicans can’t make things much, much worse.

My only hope is that this effectively gives the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves.

Unfortunately, it’s enough rope for them to hang a lot of other people too. And in two years’ time, you’ll get to vote for another right-of-centre Dem who will promise “hope” and “change” when they really mean bombs and disappointment.

ah, so long, farewell America, see ya…
Here in “ultra liberal Massachusetts”, we got ourselves another Republican governor, (remember Romney??) but the media likes to tell us that he’s “barely Republican, Massachusetts has a different breed of Republican than the rest of the country.”
[sorry for what I’m about to do:]
Ballot measures:
#1) Repeal: indexing of tax on gasoline to cost-of-living, annually, automatically. (to pay for bridge repair and pothole filling, etc): YES,REPEALED (one faux-argument: all those taxes will go to house illegal immigrants…)
#2) expand bottle bill (deposits on soft drink bottles): NO
#3) repeal limits on casinos: YES (now casinos can spring up wherever they want)
#4) sick-time pay (every company must give their employees pay during sick leave, including paternity leave): YES

Interestingly, Melissa over at Shakesville points out that most of the direct ballot measures that passed were progressive, and many regressive ones failed. So it may be that a majority of Americans* want things like minimum wage hikes and don’t want things like fetal personhood, but haven’t quite figured out how to get those with elected officials. (Or else the Democratic party can’t figure out how to find people who support these things, convince people they will get these things if they elect Democrats, and get candidates elected and things passed.)

It’s not that voters and Democrats just haven’t figured it out yet. They’re being actively opposed, by gerrymandering, by voter suppression, and by floods of dark money from giant rich corporations whose leadership skews to radical conservatives. Democrats who sell out for big finances at least get the benefit of money, if not all the other shenanigans. Just being aware of what’s going on, while vital, isn’t going to give people on the ground $500 million to throw at local elections, or give those 40,000 people in Georgia their votes back.

gussnarp@32: I can believe McConnell. What causes conflict is not the fact that we have a two-party system; rather, what causes conflict is the fact that one of the two parties thinks its highest priority is to prevent the other party from doing anything at all.

Yeah, we can blame the people, the voters. And to some degree they deserve the blame. But we need to also blame Democrats. Democrats have largely failed to convince people that they’ll actually help them. Democrats were so scared of Republicans calling them socialists that they run away from liberal ideas. Democrats may have championed a moderate health insurance reform and one minimum wage raise in the first half of Obama’s first term, but can anyone tell me, in the past 4 years, what has been loudly championed by Obama or other prominent Democrats that would substantially help the financial situation of a typical middle class family, or address income inequality, or punish wall street or prevent the same things that just happened from happening again? Republicans are fucking evil. But we’re four years running of Democrats doing jack shit. Republicans are going to call them communists no matter what, at least give us SOMETHING to actually rally around. Maybe then they could turn out their base.

All of the voter-restriction efforts, all of the forked-tongue pronouncements by candidates like Mitch McConnell and Jodi Ernst, all of that could have been overcome if Democrats had just gone to the polls in greater numbers. Most of them didn’t vote.

The Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that ‘as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night.’ My point is, God’s still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous. — Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma. [Now this dude is the new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.]

What’s to stop a jihadist from going to Liberia, getting himself infected [with Ebola], and then flying to New York and riding the subway until he keels over? This is just the biological warfare version of a suicide bomb. Can you imagine the consequences if someone with Ebola vomited in a New York City subway car? — Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin [Likely to be the new chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

And think about this: Ted Cruz will likely chair the Science and Space Panel; and Bob Corker will chair the Foreign Relations Committee.

The Koch brothers got what they wanted this time. They seem to be getting better at buying what they want in the political arena — same Big Money tactics, with more wins this time.

The two groups at the heart of the Koch brothers’ political network spent a combined $100 million on competitive races in 2014, spokesmen for the organizations tell National Journal.

Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit organization that serves as the Koch brothers’ flagship political enterprise, spent $77 million on competitive Senate and House races, said spokesman Levi Russell. That total includes $56 million from AFP on TV, radio, and digital ads and direct mail, and another $21 million on grassroots efforts from their state chapters. […]

Sucks for you. Too bad. What did you do to affect the election cycle? Did you contribute to a progressive candidate’s campaign? Pass out fliers? Help in voter registration? Get out the vote? Did you even vote?

I went to the polls and saw one thing — a line of old white people. There were more walkers in the room than there were cell phones. I’m over 60, and I was the youngest person in the room by a LOT, except for the poll workers.

Want change? Work for it. Get involved in your local party. Find and support smart, progressive candidates who support policies that help the maximum number of people with the least amount of harm to other people. On the very, very local level.

National turnout was below 38%. Republicans win when turnout is low. It was the “likely voters” who put Republicans in office. If you poll registered voters, you get an entirely different picture from the “likely voters” poll results.

CNN reported that 75% of the likely voters are white, and older. As for the more representative population, many of whom did not vote:

Here’s what’s going to happen in the Senate according to Ted Cruz: “The two biggest issues nationwide were, number one, stopping the train wreck that is Obamacare; number two, stopping the president from illegally granting amnesty […]” Cruz went on to say that he and other like-minded Senators (Tea Party types) may not be willing to follow Mitch McConnell’s lead.

Also here in ultra-liberal Massachusetts, anti-gay bigot extraordinaire Scott Lively received over 19,000 votes in last night’s governor’s race. If this evil bastard had his druthers, it would be a crime to even advocate for LGBT equality. Yet nearly 20,000 of my neighbors looked at him and said “Yep. He’s our man.”

futurechemist @ 11 and douttthat @ 19 – You’re fools. The first thing McConnell will do once he takes control of the Senate is destroy the filibuster. Everything will need only a simple majority vote, which the Republicans have. They will then proceed to try to pass every inane idea their lunatic fringe caucus in both houses wants, including beginning impeachment of the president no later than March. Obama will either have to veto virtually everything or, far more likely given his conciliatory behavior, he will try to make terrible bargains rather than let the Republicans continually shut down the government and destroy the economy.

This might affect Obama’s ability to nominate agency heads and lower level federal judges that no longer can be filibustered, but as far as I can tell that’s about the only change.

Well,frankly, pretty much all appointments, not just agency heads and judges, are going to be problematic now. Since Republicans will almost certainly eliminate or evade the filibuster at will, Obama will have to aggressively use the veto pen to maintain the status quo on legislation, and I don’t know if that’s something he really can be counted on to do.

And, of course, we are now destined to be subject to impeachment theater. The only thing holding back the House Republicans was that a Senate trial conducted by Democrats would make them look really, really bad; now that Republicans will control the trial they’ll impeach, even though they can’t convict.

Lot’s of media coverage is fawning over a black, Republican, mormon, woman from Utah, Mia Love.

Here are a few facts about Mia Love that are more important than her skin color and her gender, quotes are directly from Love:

“As far as federal government goes, we should just eliminate the Department of Education.”

When asked if there need to be more federal laws to protect women in terms of equal pay, Love responded, “The issues that we have aren’t gender based.”

Background on Mia Love:

Love, 36, was born in New York to Haitian immigrants. She converted to Mormonism after meeting her husband Jason, who is white, when he was a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints missionary in Connecticut. She converted to the faith just before their marriage.

Ah, an hormonal convert.

Love is the first black woman to serve as a Republican member of the House of Congress. (Shirley Chisholm was a Democrat.) Love is also a gun-toting woman.

drst@53 (and others). I agree that this election was in no way a good thing (other than locally, for instance here in Seattle, and Washington, we passed a gun control bill that closes loopholes, expanded Seattle pre-school for low-income families, expanded bus funding for Seattle, and possibly decreased class sizes (that vote was too close to call last time I checked)). However, I still don’t think it will be as bad as some say. The ACA is safe (other than the Supreme Court stripping out portions of it, which might or might not happen), and that has really been the centerpiece of Obama’s presidency.

Honestly, let the Republicans get rid of the filibuster, or take it back to the original version where you have to keep talking continuously. It works for the House to only need a simple majority, and it never made sense to me to require 60% to pass legislation.

As for impeachment, didn’t Bill Clinton’s approval ratings actually rise during his impeachment, once Americans saw how ridiculous the whole impeachment process was? And conviction requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate, which is definitely not going to happen.

I’m also optimistic about 2016 (feel free to call me naive). 2014 was a bad Senate cycle for Democrats. First, the Class 2 senate seats are for considerably more conservative states than either Class 1 or Class 3. Second, there were a lot of Democrats who road Obama’s coattails in 2008, but were up for election not, in a less favorable environment.

And here I was thinking wanted a black female representing them. Turns out they just hate education.

Of course they hate education. They’re Republicans. I’ve always had my suspicions that they’d be willing to swallow their racism and sexism for a moment to elect a regressive-aligned member of a minority, both because of their anti-intellectual tendencies, and (probably more importantly) their perception that it’s mostly minorities that are supported by public education. Now we know that it’s true, at least, for Utah.

In Arizona we just passed a proposition for nullification, a “right to try” proposition that makes me imagine that Stanislaw Burzynski will be opening up a Phoenix/Tucson clinic soon, and our tepid but pro-choice Democrat representing Tucson is currently losing to an anti-choice lunatic by less than 40 votes.

Oh well, at least in Tucson we managed to pass a bond proposal to fix our disastrous animal care facilities, and Kirkpatrick/Sinema were re-elected. Some kind of silver lining, I guess.

As for impeachment, didn’t Bill Clinton’s approval ratings actually rise during his impeachment, once Americans saw how ridiculous the whole impeachment process was? And conviction requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate, which is definitely not going to happen.

futurechemis @ 58 – I think the only thing Obama won’t cave on is the ACA. Any attempts to repeal it will be vetoed. However, there are plenty of avenues for Congress to defund or just shut down the ACA apparatus without consulting the president, and despite the outward stupidity of taking people’s health insurance away from them, I have no doubt they will attempt it.

Aside from that, Obama has contorted himself beyond belief to try to appear “reasonable” to Republicans so far even when he had a Democratic majority in both houses. I have no hope he’s suddenly going to develop a spine for the remaining two years. He will cave, cavil and otherwise fold like a cheap deck of cards over and over again, which will only feed the “weak Democrats” meme out in the country. Then if, FSM help us, Hilary Clinton is the presidential nominee, I can easily see the Democrats losing on all fronts in 2016.

I don’t know why people have this rosy-eyed view of 2016’s elections – all the gerrymandering we have now will still be in place, and both that and the voter suppression systems will only get stronger between now and then. Voters under 30 who got all starry eyed about Obama have now discovered that the world is not a magical sparkle pony – they didn’t vote in 2010, 2012 or 2014 and there’s no reason to believe they will suddenly start voting in 2016 either. We are well and truly fucking screwed.

consider this. The Democrats (let’s not call them liberals, Obama and many in Congress are hardly liberal) in control have used drone strikes and bombs in a limited way. I don’t agree with what they’re doing, but if the Republicans were in charge we’d have a full scale re-invasion of Iraq going on right now.

Uh, under Bush there were 51 drone strikes. Under Obama there have been more than 390. The facts don’t remotely support a claim that Obama’s administration is exhibiting judiciousness and restraint as compared with Bush’s. Any such claim is a pretty transparent effort to allay the cognitive dissonance of voting for an even bigger war-monger than the guy representing the overtly hawkish party.

Telling ourselves that may help us sleep at night, but it’s counterproductive if our goal is to actually make fewer corpses out of brown, foreign people. He’s a fucking mass murderer. Our choice in the most recent election was between a mass-murderer and a man who hadn’t yet committed mass murder, but promised to get busy doing so as soon as he took office. We are, at best, voting for the mass-murderer that we hope will have the smallest body count.

Uh, under Bush there were 51 drone strikes. Under Obama there have been more than 390. The facts don’t remotely support a claim that Obama’s administration is exhibiting judiciousness and restraint as compared with Bush’s.

To be completely fair, drones were in their infancy both in the technology and the numbers during a good portion of Bush’s presidency. I do believe Bush would have liked to have many more drone strikes, and we don’t know how many black ops may have used drones that we don’t know about, but you are definitely correct that his actions are still horrible. I believe gussnarp’s point was more that if a Republican were in office we would still be in active war on all fronts still, possibly with another one developing in Ukraine or somewhere else.

Here’s another quote from Senator-elect Joni Ernst. It does not inspire confidence in her ability to govern:

Last year, Ernst predicted that Agenda 21 agents may start “moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city centers and then telling them that you don’t have property rights anymore. These are all things that the UN is behind and it’s bad for the United States, bad for families here in the state of Iowa.”

And here is another wild conspiracy theory to which some of our Republican senators are holding fast:

Tom Cotton, the Arkansas congressman who won his race for U.S. Senate yesterday, said during his campaign that his opponent and President Obama are “refusing to secure our border” and as a result, ISIS is now at the gates: “Groups like the Islamic State collaborate with drug cartels in Mexico who have clearly shown they’re willing to expand outside the drug trade into human trafficking and potentially even terrorism. They could infiltrate our defenseless border and attack us right here in places like Arkansas.”

The conspiracy theory about ISIS infiltrating the U.S. through the border with Mexico first emerged on the conspiracy theory outlet WorldNetDaily and, as these things typically go, was then picked up by pundits on Fox News. Eventually, the fallacious claim became a great way for Republican candidates like David Perdue and Thom Tillis to attack their opponents on both foreign policy and immigration reform in one talking point.

And then there’s this:

Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican who just won a seat in the U.S. House, […] told listeners on his talk radio show that the appearance of blood moons “have preceded world-changing, shaking-type events.”

futurechemist @ 11 and douttthat @ 19 – You’re fools. The first thing McConnell will do once he takes control of the Senate is destroy the filibuster.

shoot, dang, never expect consistency from the Rethuglicans. Didn’t they vigorously oppose destroying the filibuster? They used the “finger filibuster” to shutdown any action of the Democrats. McConnell is expert at shutting down the Senate: “Least Productive Congress Ever”, So I’m sure you’re correct: McConnell will destroy the filibuster as his first move.
My bad, all I see the Rethuglicans as is destruction. At the best: absolute inaction; status quo is sacred.

@64 “I don’t know why people have this rosy-eyed view of 2016’s elections.”

Well, for starters, the GOP POTUS candidate is up against the Blue Wall of 18 or so states that have gone Democratic for an unprecedented 6 elections in a row and represent 242 electoral votes. All the Democratic candidate has to do is hold serve and win Florida, game over. That and the GOP won’t have anyone to lay the blame on when they either fuck everything up or do nothing over the next 2 years. Further, the GOP has much more ground to defend in the 2016 senatorial elections, 14 more seats if memory serves. And the demographics continue to shift the Democrats way.

Sure, any candidate can be bad enough, or any scandal large enough, for the Dems to lose, but the deck is heavily tilted in their favor at the moment.

Any such claim is a pretty transparent effort to allay the cognitive dissonance of voting for an even bigger war-monger than the guy representing the overtly hawkish party.

Oh bullshit. More drone strikes is meaningless. Frankly, it’s not about drone strikes. I used the word because drones were mentioned in the post I was responding to and because drones seem to be doing most of the striking under Obama. But let’s just abandon the word “drone” because it’s not the least bit helpful, and it’s not the least bit appropriate to determining who’s a “bigger war-monger”. Let’s instead count just “strikes”. Bombs dropped. Bullets fired. People killed.

I have my problems with Obama, and I don’t like how he’s handled the bullshit war on terror, but I have no cognitive dissonance or guilt around him at all. I am 100% glad I voted for him and glad he won. He is far better than the possible alternatives we had.

Meet another Republican, this one from the county governing level in Maryland:

Michael Peroutka, newly elected to the Anne Arundel County Council in Maryland […] is a radical Christian Reconstructionist and southern secessionist. He says “so-called civil rights laws” are not valid because “there is no such thing as a civil right.” He says promoting evolution “is an act of disloyalty to America.” […] He thinks gay people are out to “recruit your children” into their “deathstyle.”

Remarkably for someone who has just become an elected official in Maryland, Peroutka argues that since state legislators have passed laws like marriage equality that “violate God’s law,” the Maryland General Assembly is “no longer a valid legislative body” and none of the laws that it has passed are “legally valid and legally enforceable.”[…]

“It is not the role of civil government to house, feed, clothe, educate or give health care to…ANYBODY!”

Peroutka was the 2004 presidential nominee of the Constitution Party, […]

Gordon “Dr. Chaps” Klingenschmitt, a radical anti-gay Religious Right activist who brags of having once tried to rid a woman of the “foul spirit of lesbianism” through an exorcism and who openly proclaims that “American law needs to reflect God’s law” and that our foreign policy must be based on the Bible, won election to the Colorado House of Representatives last night.

Klingenschmitt, who wrote a book about how President Obama is possessed by demons […] ran an utterly embarrassing campaign yet nonetheless managed to defeat his Democratic opponent by nearly 40 points. […]

Klingenschmitt is a viciously anti-gay theocrat who believes that gay people “want your soul” and may sexually abuse their own children, which is why he says they should face government discrimination since only people who are going to heaven are entitled to equal treatment by the government[…]

The idea that Republicans, emboldened by this election, will now negotiate more reasonably with the president seems like wishful thinking. At least one senior administration official assumes it is. When I asked him whether he was buying this happy talk, he laughed and grimaced simultaneously. “The problem hasn’t been that Boehner doesn’t want to govern,” he said. “He can’t, because of the crazies in his own party.” With these election results, the official pointed out, there will be even more “crazies” for Boehner and McConnell to contend with.

“And just wait until Cruz is chairman of some subcommittee,” he added with a sigh. A long sigh.

Here’s what Mia Love, Utah’s new great-black-female-mormon-hope has to say about gay marriage:

I, along with most Utahns, am very disappointed by decisions released today by the Supreme Court pertaining to gay marriage. For five justices to virtually overturn the vote of millions of Californians is indefensible. [From July 26, 2013]

The GOP sold the US on a book of lies. Raumer said he wanted to work with people but the GOP has a long history of refusing to compromise with anyone, even shutting down the government when they didn’t get their way.

Sucks for you. Too bad. What did you do to affect the election cycle? Did you contribute to a progressive candidate’s campaign? Pass out fliers? Help in voter registration? Get out the vote? Did you even vote?
I went to the polls and saw one thing — a line of old white people. There were more walkers in the room than there were cell phones. I’m over 60, and I was the youngest person in the room by a LOT, except for the poll workers.
Want change? Work for it. Get involved in your local party. Find and support smart, progressive candidates who support policies that help the maximum number of people with the least amount of harm to other people. On the very, very local level.
Everything else is whining.

I did all this, so I guess I have the credentials to tell you that you’re full of shit when you propose that ANYBODY deserves what the GOP is primed to inflict on this country. Regardless of whether or how they voted. Bigots don’t deserve it, criminals don’t deserve it, lazy peope don’t deserve it. Nobody deserves it. Stop being evil, you fuckface.

This election was lost in 2008, before his inauguration, when Obama decided that saving Goldman Sachs was more important than saving the middle class. Midterms come down to the economy and Obama’s ‘hope and change’ really meant that he hoped there would be some change left for us peons after Wall Street sucked the economy dry.

Nebraska passed minimum wage and simultaneously elected a Koch-brothers style billionaire that will put Nebraska on a path to emulate Kochsas, namely lower taxes for the very highest bracket and raise them everywhere else. So they’ll need the minimum wage hike so they can extract more taxes from those folks to pay for Ricketts’ personal tax cut. The farmers will slowly learn (but still vote R forever) that they’re not rich enough to qualify for tax cuts. And forget Medicaid expansion so don’t get sick here, but as health industry is huge, the docs and hospitals won’t be getting their extra $200M and so they’ll learn they’re not rich enough for tax cuts or subsidies.

btw: Ricketts is Ameritrade so you might think of that so if you save money from trades you’re funding a hard right wingnut that makes Hobby Lobby look sane.

Obama had three notable points at which he could have killed the drone bombing program (or at least suspended it) without any harm to PR.

The first was, of course, when he took office — remember how he was going to wind down our military engagements? It would have been entirely reasonable to say “no more drone strikes” as a part of doing that — except of course that Obama did not wind down our military engagements. We had a surge, and he spent the first 3 years desperately trying to negotiate a longer stay in Iraq than the original agreement Bush made with the Iraqis. (Interestingly, the thing that kept us from staying was not a promise to leave, but rather the expiration of the Iraqi promise not to hold our troops responsible for war crimes; right up front, the military knew it was doing horrible, unjustifiable, inhuman things.)

The second was when we started getting friendly foreigners from the countries involved telling us that the drone strikes were doing more harm than good. Obama could have at least suspended the programs pending review. Then there was the third point, when the CIA issued their review and came to the conclusion — obvious to anyone with a brain — that drone bombing creates terrorists faster than it can possibly be killing them (and, incidentally, that most of the people being killed aren’t actually terrorists, but we already knew that). The program is now officially counterproductive. Obama actually ramped up the program at that point, if I recall correctly.

Meanwhile, Obama opened up military action in Libya despite Congress actively voting against it, and threatened to do the same in Syria (except that Putin headed him off).

Anyone claiming, at this point, that Democrats are somehow either smarter than Republicans about the military, or less likely to use the military, is either lying or not too bright, because we have a counterproductive military act being expanded and reinforced, and we also have unnecessary and defiant use of military intervention, both done by the Democrats. (That whole thing about how Nader was wrong about there not being a difference between Republicans and Democrats? Remember how Democratic tribalists used to use Iraq to claim that that wasn’t true? Obama demonstrates quite well that, no, Nader was right — the Democrats are just as war-hungry and murderous as the Republicans.)

As for “if a Republican were in office we would still be in active war on all fronts still, possibly with another one developing in Ukraine or somewhere else”, really? You still believe that? Do you even read the news? The only reason we aren’t in “active war” is because Obama has discovered that if you don’t call it “war”, you can send off the troops without Congressional approval. Even Bush was technically better than that.

The only reason we aren’t in “active war” is because Obama has discovered that if you don’t call it “war”, you can send off the troops without Congressional approval. Even Bush was technically better than that.

I still think we have fewer people actually in active combat, i.e. harm’s way. I would definitely prefer if we had none in harm’s way, but don’t know that it’s feasible. Obviously I haven’t followed the details too closely, so I’m not completely sure how it’s a war, but not called a war. I know there are lots of drone strikes, but I still think under a Republican president, or at least certain people as President, there would be more “boots on the ground” meaning more people in harm’s way. So, while,e Obama isn’t great in this respect, he still is putting fewer people in harm’s way.

@The Vicar (#83) You want to know a vote I feel guilty about? I voted for Nader. Bush won. Bush started the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan and killed hundreds of thousands of people and no, nothing Obama’s done makes him as bad or worse than that. Nor do I think we’d have had as disastrous a war had Gore been President. Frankly, I still lay every death in the “War on Terror” squarely at the feet of Bush. Because I don’t think he’d be killing any fewer people today than Obama is. And I don’t think we’d be in a situation where the President feels the impetus to use drone strikes to assassinate people had Bush not destabilized the Middle East. Fuck, ISIS exists. They’re real and they’re killing innocent people in large numbers and trying to overthrow the government in two countries so they can implement murderous theocratic regimes worse than the ones they’d replace. And that is happening because we went to war in Iraq because we had a President who wanted a full scale war in order to enrich his cronies and avenge some perceived insult to his father. No, I don’t think Obama’s as bad just because he’s somewhat bad.

And as for stopping the drone strikes without damaging his PR, you may not really understand this country. The majority favor killing suspected terrorists with drones, or in any other way. I don’t like that, but I don’t have the power to stop it. I can, however, vote for the guy who will rein it in just a bit instead of fomenting fear and hatred to justify wanton slaughter. There’s a difference between what Bush did and what Obama has done, and it’s a big damned difference.

I’m a 65 year old Spanish person. I didn’t have a vote in your election. I do however feel for all those people in the USA who are suffering and will suffer more with these results (see comments by Lynna OM and others).
All the things you suggest in your post I do here in Spain, not only against the corrupt politicians that we are slowly but surely exposing and purging but also against the Catholic church.

I have been married for 41 years and I can’t envisage my wife will be seeking an abortion any time son. I do however think that people who do seek this should be able to obtain this medical proceedure by right. I don’t have any children but I have family and friends who do and I am concerned for their future, not mine. Like you, I shall be dead but they or their children will not. It is our responsibility to leave them in a world with the best chances of a quality of life.

Sucks for me? Yes it does and people whose response is “fuck you, I’ve got mine” makes it suck even more.

First time I visited Maine, I found myself witness to a large group of white people cracking racist “terrorist” jokes about the birthday party of a brown skinned child of seeming Middle Eastern heritage. Second time I visited Maine, I got to be privvy to a string of racist diatribe dotted with the n word. You know where else I encountered those blatant racist attitudes at pretty much first blush? It wasn’t Mississippi, but it was right next door. Same excuses when called out on it and everything, both places. Apparently I am not from there so I wouldn’t understand. They didn’t really mean it. Their best friends are black! (the good kind of black)

Based upon those two points of anecdata, I suspect Maine is more like Mississippi than you think. And I say this as a western transplant to the US south who’s seen her share of “we don’t have that [racism, sexism] problem here” and understands quite well that yes, we do, and you do, too, and so do they. I was born in a sundown town, fer chrissakes. In Oregon. Everywhere in the US is like Mississippi and we hopeful ally white folks would all do well to remember as much, at the very least to do away with one more distancing tactic that PoC have to use their resources to try and disabuse us of.

@Kevin Kehres #46:
I am glad for you that you have ample resources, plenty of free time, and no pressing crisis to keep you from fully engaging in local politics. Those who do not aren’t whining, they’re struggling, so you’d do well to remember 1) that people in crisis and those who are marginalized tend to have less energy and time, sometimes a lot less, to do things not directly related to daily survival and 2) not everyone you engage on the internet has the same lifestyle or resources you do.

What I think is going to happen is that we are in for two years of political schizophrenia from the Republicans. Half are going to want to sink the Obama presidency at any cost, and the other half are going to try to at least provide the appearance they are getting things done. With control of both sides of Congress, they must appear useful for their party’s candidates to be viable for 2016.

The desire to prove Republicans can govern also makes them hostage to their opponents in the Democratic party and the media. It empowers Senator Harry Reid, whose dethroning was in large measure the point of the election. […]

A prove-you-can-govern strategy will inevitably divide the party on the same tea-party-vs.-establishment lines that Republicans have just succeeded in overcoming…. Even if Republicans passed this foolish test, it would do little for them. If voters come to believe that a Republican Congress and a Democratic president are doing a fine job of governing together, why wouldn’t they vote to continue the arrangement in 2016? http://www.nationalreview.com/article/392082/governing-trap-editors

[…] it is the biggest, and perhaps the most important mandate a political party has had in the recent era. And it is very simple what that mandate is. It is to stop Barack Obama. It is to stop the Democrat Party. There is no other reason why Republicans were elected yesterday.

i am so fucking depressed and everything i read just makes me angrier and sadder. i just want to fucking give up. who gives a shit about this country anymore? clearly fucking nobody. christ these have been the worst three months i can remember in terms of news and just fucking existing. is there any goddamn thing anyone can do at this point or do i just get to hope my post-apocalyptic waterworld/1984 dystopian existence is marginally less unpleasant than anyone elses?

Oh bullshit. More drone strikes is meaningless. Frankly, it’s not about drone strikes. I used the word because drones were mentioned in the post I was responding to and because drones seem to be doing most of the striking under Obama. But let’s just abandon the word “drone” because it’s not the least bit helpful, and it’s not the least bit appropriate to determining who’s a “bigger war-monger”. Let’s instead count just “strikes”. Bombs dropped. Bullets fired. People killed.
Go ahead. Tally that up. Tell me that Obama is remotely comparable to Bush.

This is perfectly put. It puts the issue in perspective in as few words as possible.

But the Vicar has already proven incapable of gaining perspective on this issue, sadly.

On a different note: Kevin Kehres, that’s great that you are chuckling at the people who might suffer because of this. Go fuck yourself.

I live in the land of sky blue waters, Minnesota, and I’m happy to see that Al Franken retained his seat so both of our senators are Dems. Michelle Bachmann will no longer be an embarrassment, but her extremely gerrymandered district seat will be taken by Tom Emmer (R) who ran for Governor in the last election as a tea party endorsed idiot and lost. He has distanced himself from the teabaggers, so hopefully he will not be worse than his predecessor. ( I realize that bar is so low that it is somewhere in the lithosphere. I refuse to even think about what actions would make him worse than Mrs. Bachmann.) On a side note, we also happen to have had one of the best public school systems in the country for decades, and some of the highest literacy rates. Coincidence?

This is going to be a long comment. A lot of people have mentioned the low voter turnout among the under-30s, and as a 24-year-old, I can tell you this–we don’t feel like anyone gives a shit about us.

Seriously. I live in Georgia (Jody Hice was an option on my ballot form) and many of my close friends voted* because we met due to political activism, but when it comes to issues we care about:

*All candidates were anti-ACA
*All candidates were anti-choice, and many were anti-birth control
*Carter at least pretended to care about the HOPE scholarship, but no one addressed student loans/university costs
*Most were conservative Christians (an issue among my friends because most are non-Christians of various stripes)

and so on and so forth. Even those who would have voted Repub don’t vote because they know they don’t have to. Additionally, voter oppression usually targets POC and college students. A friend of mine was told he was not registered in his college town, despite having voted there just fine in 2012. If candidates want our votes, they need to address our concerns.

*Libertarian, mostly, but at least they voted.
*All information is AFAIR/AFAIK.

The tea party now has even more of a stranglehold on the Tate of Texas than before.
The schools have been sinking, the environment has been suffering, the immigrants and dreamers have been living in fear for years, and women have watched as our rights have been chipped away. With the bigots who have been elected to state office yesterday, it’s at much worse.
I simply can’t wait for the hubby to retire so that we can return to California, which seems to be one of the saner states in this country.

I can’t say I’m too surprised; the polls leading up to yesterday were predicting this result. Plus, a lot of DNC candidates were constantly separating themselves from Obama and his policies…which isn’t the greatest strategy when the opposing party practically wants him tarred and feathered (after impeachment proceedings, of course).

Out here in California I voted and was glad to see some of the ballot measures pass–no GMO bill this time!–though my district’s US House representative choices were a little skewed compared to most of the country’s races. It was a choice between a Democrat…and a Democrat. (I guess that’s still better than running uncontested.)

Though before anyone thinks California is totally blue, we did just reelect Benghazi-obsessed Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter (who said we should use tactical nukes if we ever went to war with Iran).

I have to agree with post #46 by Kevin Kehres.
I want to think that his post #3 is sarcastic, but that’s irrelevant anyway.
I’m not happy, humanity’s problems are MY problems.
But he is right: talking and voting is just not enough, not anymore.

It’s not happening only in the USA, but in most Western democracies: we the people have grown complacent, do nothing but vote (maybe) and complain. Maybe take the streets and protest.
Thing is, politicians don’t give a shit.
They don’t have to.
They can screw us over all they want and the worst that can happen is that, after bearing a few years of far-right craziness, we’ll have to vote for their next puppet again, hoping against hope that we won’t be screwed to badly.
Rinse, repeat.
I lived in a few different countries, and this is what seems to be happening everywhere.

And everywhere the feeling is the same: too many of us expect someone else to work hard to solve our problems, and it’s just not working.
We want the Messiah, the Hopey Changey.
We want someone else to take the burden.
But it’s our responsibility.

We can’t influence the great bigwigs.
But we can influence those just above us in the power scale, we can make a difference there, cleaning our political class from below.
In the long term, the hope is that only decent politicians will be allowed to raise from the ranks.
It’s not the magic bullet and it takes effort and time, but what is the alternative?

I read that you folks in California passed a measure that would make more charges into misdemeanors, thus keeping more people out of jail, and that the savings would be directed to education and mental health care.
I find that to be much saner than most of the country.
When we lived there, it was in Monterey county, which is close enough to San Francisco to be much more liberal and sane than southern California. I loved it there. I’ve dreamed about it many times while suffering through the awful heat and the awful people here in south Texas.

For those of you criticizing Kevin Kehres:
First of all, you’re right, what he is saying is morally abhorrent.
But take the next step: Why is he saying this?
He’s given up. He’s been there, done that for how many years (he already said he’s over 60). It’s time for someone else to step up.
He has shown up for the sake of others (since as he said, there is nothing in it for him in this election) and the people he is there to help don’t show up themselves. How much of this can anyone take?
This place is a bubble – an echo chamber. Except for the occasional troll, everyone here pretty much agrees on the same principles (including me). The commentators here are generally thoughtful, factual and logical, but being correct doesn’t help if the message doesn’t penetrate outside the bubble, and the crazies are doing a better job of getting the message out than we are. So he’s absolutely right – unless you’re out there getting the message out, getting the vote out and so on, then you might as well have admitted that you’ve given up too.

I work with young people and what I see is this: There are 10% that are amazing people and will surpass me in every way, there is .1% that are just genuine assholes. and 89.9% that just don’t care, as long as they get their kicks on the weekend. Until we can convince more than half of that 89.9% that doing nothing = letting the assholes run the show, then the assholes get to keep running the show. The majority of people will vote for the guy that offers free beer (metaphorically) – even if they would realize by 30 seconds thought that that beer has got to be paid for somehow, and it’s not going to be the guy in office. We’ve got to find a way to make them do that 30 seconds of thinking.

And don’t forget, they watch fox news, and they don’t fact check, so it has to hit home fast, hard and at an emotional level. Logic and reason don’t win here.

When we lived there, it was in Monterey county, which is close enough to San Francisco to be much more liberal and sane than southern California. I loved it there. I’ve dreamed about it many times while suffering through the awful heat and the awful people here in south Texas.

New Zealand reminds me a LOT of northern cali, circa about 25 years ago, but with full speed internet access.

I am sick of hearing journalists put all the blame on cowardly Dems. Where were they when republicans were blatantly lying? When the media will gladly put a republican liar next to someone trying to tell the truth, I understand not having any faith in the truth.

I think the contradiction between the ballot initiatives and candidate results says more about the media than the candidates. The liberals are still saying liberal things if you pay very close attention. They just know they cannot say it to dishonest reporters who will be glad to twist it or slow pitch it to a liar because it will be a controversy that gets attention.

one thing for sure I am not going to fall for the republican spin no matter what happens.
All politics is local and like the man said it is the economy stupid.
No one really thinks we are on the threshold of an economic boom and we know that the policies of the the republican’s wont get us there. We all ready ran that experiment enough times already to expect any great improvement. So they won and they will spin it that way as a mandate they will have to take the blame when the inevitable happens.
it will probably be some difficult times ahead but maybe we might learn something out of the experience. I am trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel but I am afraid it is just a train going the opposite direction.
uncle frogy

For those of you criticizing Kevin Kehres:
First of all, you’re right, what he is saying is morally abhorrent.

Yup.

But take the next step: Why is he saying this?

Cuz he’s a morally abhorrent fuckwad?

He’s given up. He’s been there, done that for how many years (he already said he’s over 60). It’s time for someone else to step up.
He has shown up for the sake of others (since as he said, there is nothing in it for him in this election) and the people he is there to help don’t show up themselves. How much of this can anyone take?

What exactly does he have to “take”? Like he pointed out, he doesn’t actually has to suffer as a result of any of this. He’s fine. He “showed up”? You mean he voted? Good for him. Other people are surviving. Other people have their lives, their health, their families on the line.

Yeah, Kevin will be fine. He’s just chortling at the people who won’t be.

All the rest of that bullshit you wrote? And that he wrote? It’s not like anyone here doesn’t fucking know that.

There are ways to talk about that, too, without being a morally abhorrent fuckwad. Stop defending him for being a morally abhorrent fuckwad.

There was that Princeton study that came out the other day showing that America is actually an oligarchy, not a democracy (or democratic republic, for the nit-pickers), and has been an oligarchy for years.

So, what do we do? I don’t have the answers. I’ve been volunteering for some pretty awesome local progressive candidates, but they’ve been consistently sabotaged by the Democratic party in the area, because the Dems are run by crusty, conservative white people.

I can see avenues and strategies towards altering this balance of power through politics, but it’s a 1 – 2 decades long project, at least.

And of all the issues that concern me, global warming scares me the most. The effects of global warming aren’t going to wait while we sort our politics out.

So this has me seriously considering whether I should quit my job and go live with my parents and just do activism full time.

It has me regretting getting that degree that got me this nice job because I could have been throwing my body on the gears of the machine, either literally or metaphorically, in the interim, instead of trying to pay off my student loans.

So don’t fucking defend assholes like Kevin. I don’t care if you agree with me on all the issues. Laughing at other people’s suffering just isn’t fucking acceptable. Claiming that people deserve to suffer isn’t fucking acceptable.

What about all the people who don’t support the GOP, like myself?
What about the people who want things to be better, and cast our votes for the less evil choice?

Also, what about the people who are going to suffer under a largely GOP led country?
What about the poor and disadvantaged, whom we know the GOP dislikes? Is this what they deserve?
What about the women, People of Color, and LGBT who voted against the GOP, who will now see ever more efforts to see their rights curtailed or reversed? Do they deserve such governance?

Your comment is apathetic at best and is of such a high quality of shitstainery that I’m boggled it came from you.

*****

canadiansteve @106:

This place is a bubble – an echo chamber. Except for the occasional troll, everyone here pretty much agrees on the same principles (including me). The commentators here are generally thoughtful, factual and logical, but being correct doesn’t help if the message doesn’t penetrate outside the bubble, and the crazies are doing a better job of getting the message out than we are. So he’s absolutely right – unless you’re out there getting the message out, getting the vote out and so on, then you might as well have admitted that you’ve given up too.

Gee, thanks for being a condescending twit who presumes to know what people here do in meatspace. You don’t have the first clue, but you accuse people here not got getting out. You’re presumptuous and you’re wrong.

So don’t fucking defend assholes like Kevin. I don’t care if you agree with me on all the issues. Laughing at other people’s suffering just isn’t fucking acceptable. Claiming that people deserve to suffer isn’t fucking acceptable.
Stop.

This ↑
This is what Kevin’s comment did. He takes a shit on the all people who will be suffering up more GOP control. He tells them ‘you deserve this’…’you deserve to suffer’. What kind of person tells people like that? I’ll tell you what kind: an apathetic asshole.

It’s like everyone all of a sudden forgot about voter disenfranchisement and how that affects marginalized voters. Did women who were denied registration because they’d changed their names upon marriage get the government they deserved? Did students who had their campus polling places closed get the government they deserved? Did poor and/or minority voters who had to stand in line for hours and risk losing their employment in order to vote get the government they deserved? Did all the residents in states which did away with or severely limited early voting periods and instated voter ID laws get the government they deserved? This shit has an effect. We are seeing that effect. But yeah, let’s blame the victims some more, they must not care, that’s the real problem.

Making it more difficult to vote has an effect on voter turnout, installing barriers to political participation is a barrier to political participation, why is this hard.

My state had record mid term turnout. We had Moral Mondays, GOTV campaigns galore, and young people fighting hard to keep their polling places open. Progressive candidates still lost, not by a wide margin (Hagan lost by less than 2%), but lose they did. We also had elimination of same day registration, gerrymandered districts, Koch funded misinformation pamphlets going out in the mail, an early voting period that was nearly halved, repealing of voter enfranchisement protections statewide, and elimination of straight ticket voting. Many people thought they needed ID to vote in this election thanks to misinformation (they didn’t, not until 2016). We had broken machines, understaffed polling places, long lines, and millions of dollars from Pope and Koch funneled into the state to keep things this way. These things have an effect. At least try to acknowledge the illness before you go around assigning blame for the symptoms. This isn’t about people not giving a fuck, this is about goddamned exhaustion from swimming against the tide.

But we’re four years running of Democrats doing jack shit. Republicans are going to call them communists no matter what, at least give us SOMETHING to actually rally around. Maybe then they could turn out their base.

I think you’re giving the Democrats way too much credit. They’ve been worse than useless (because they take up space that people who actually give a damn could’ve used) backstabbers for decades now.

Onamission5 @117: rightwing doofuses are definitely not done restricting the vote under the guise of stopping voter fraud. They tried so hard to find fraud during this election:

A week before Election Day, the “voter integrity” group True the Vote released a new smart phone app to empower its army of citizen detectives to report suspected incidents of voter fraud and intimidation across the country, in the hopes of creating, as True the Vote’s founder Catherine Engelbrecht put in an interview on Monday, “an archive that will finally pull the curtain back on the myth that there is no voter fraud.”

But it seems that the evidence of massive voter fraud that Engelbrecht hoped to expose failed to materialize. In the week that the app was available, users recorded only 18 incidents of election irregularities, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with True the Vote’s policy priorities.

Continual debunking of the voter fraud myth will have, I predict, no effect on rightwing attempts to restrict voting. With 25 states now totally in Republican control (Governorship, state legislatures, states attorney general), we can expect to see more legislation that restricts voting. Six states are under Democratic control, the rest are a mixed bag. State legislative chambers are heavily weighted toward the right, with 68 of 98 legistative chambers being Republican controlled.

Even those 18 “irregularities” were thin, ranging from malfunctioning voting machines (which is not “voter fraud”) to a Texas voter complaining a black person was standing too close to them (again, thin evidence of “fraud”). So the entire nationwide enterprise was a total bust.[…

Keep the names True the Vote and Catherine Engelbrecht in mind. Englebrecht made a name for herself with a purely fraudulent and overtly racial claim that “The New Black Panthers” were coming to conduct Texas “voter fraud,” a bit of race-baiting so successful that new Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott raided the voter registration group Engelbrecht claimed was in on the scheme. The group’s supposed fight against “voter fraud,” in other words, was from the start based on fabricated claims about black voters specifically, which should give you a gigantic clue about why their preferred “solutions” to fraud all revolve around making it more expensive and time-consuming for poor or minority voters to cast votes at all.

I’m at a loss as to how a random single citizen could even conspire to achieve any great goal using voter fraud. Voter fraud is the chief domain of politicians and those with real clout, throwin’ around weight and such, done en mass in the form of thousands of fake votes taken from obituaries.

What harm does one bundled trench coat full of 3 kids sitting on top of each other pretending to be an adult do?

Boehner and McConnell have unveiled the first whack they intend to aim at Obamacare:

Right now, full-time employment is 30 hours/week for the purposes of the law. Republicans say that is forcing—forcing—poor beleaguered employers to cut workers’ hours to below 30 hours to save them from the exorbitant costs of having to provide health insurance. And raising that threshold is going to restore those employees’ hours how exactly? Now employers would be able to make workers put in a 39.5-hour work week without shelling out for health insurance. Which is, of course, the whole point for McConnell and Boehner. Hint, American worker: They’re not looking out for your paycheck. Or your health insurance.

Part of their reasoning is that “Health costs […] continue to rise under a hopelessly flawed law that Americans have never supported.” Uh, nope, not accurate. Not factual. The rise of healthcare costs has slowed significantly in the last few years, thanks to Obamacare. No other effort has succeeded in slowing down the rise of healthcare costs like that. And, even in Republican Land, more voters want to keep Obamacare than want to ditch it.

“I would just like to say, that the Republicans — and I’m a Republican — please do not overreach,” the caller began. “I know they’re going to overreach but I’m telling you, if you advocate for the repeal of Obamacare and you get too extreme, then Hillary Clinton will be elected President in 2016.”

“This is about race,” he added. “The Republicans hate that n****r Obama.”

Here’s the real story behind some of the problems at Chicago polling places on Tuesday:

[…] Chicago election judges last weekend received mysterious automated phone calls telling them they either needed additional training or that they needed to vote a particular way [vote Republican] to serve as a judge.

[…] two judges told CBS Chicago that they were removed as GOP committeemen because they questioned the phone calls.

One judge told CBS that one of the robocalls told judges to attend training at a temporary campaign headquarters rented by the Republican Party. […]

“They were calling election judges, telling them to come in so they could get specific orders to vote for the Republican Party,” Bryson said.

Though Bryson is a Republican, she didn’t think it was an appropriate way to treat election judges. “They should not be be pressured or coerced into voting for someone to get a job, or to get an appointment,” she said.

[…] Cook County Republican chairman said Bryson was removed over unethical conduct and a Demcoratic voting history.

The robocalls disrupted voting in Chicago on Tuesday because election judges didn’t show up for work on Tuesday. According to the Chicago Board of Elections, more than 2,000 election judges didn’t arrive at polling places […]

Part of the story behind Utah’s solidly far-right conservative voting patterns: mormon bishops don’t think you can be a good mormon and a Democratic Party supporter.

Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? […]

That’s an interview question that bishops ask mormons seeking a “Temple Recommend,” or permission to enter a Mormon temple

The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, […] support marriage equality and support the movement to secure equal treatment under law for same-sex couples […]

[…] the Senate’s most powerful perch will no longer be occupied by a Mormon who does not take his religion seriously.

As a bishop, one of my responsibilities is to interview members who wish to enter Mormon temples. During our conversation, I have to ask them 13 or 14 questions […]. Although I can ask them follow-up questions based on their answers, I am not free to omit a question or substitute other questions for the standardized ones. One of the questions appears above, and I do not know how someone who is a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party can respond in the negative. […]

About 13% of voters were under 30. Therein lies one of the problems. Indeed it is in that demographic that you will find a proportionately higher liberal secular electorate whose politics reflect Ftb. And they are the ones who will be most affected by environmental issues, student loans, etc..

Folks I’m a middle aged privileged indian male who emigrated from Canada to the US 20 years ago and it was the democratic senators who supported bills to decrease waiting times for to achieve permanent residency and then citizenship. And it is unfair that I was given the golden ticket to the Wonka Factory while while a poor african american veteran whom I care for and his family live under a truck. That’s right folks, a person who shed blood for this country who has to spend the remainder of his days living in such hell with his spouse and 2 childern (one of whom is only 3 years of age). And it is only if we elect progressives like the Dianne Feinsteins will meaningful change occur in skid row. And the young adult vote would be a tsunami that drowns the GOP.

Which would be why the GOP is so fired up to disenfranchise young voters. For example, disallowing college students from voting if they came to NC universities from another state. Absentee ballots exist, sure, but how many college students know how to go about getting one, and how many are discouraged from voting at all because they can’t get a say in local issues which affect them?

None deserves an authoritarian government, but we are all responsible for what we get.

SallyStrange #112 mentions that her efforts were sabotaged by the party that’s supposed to represent us, and I think that here lies the problem.
I agree that Republicans are odious and that criticizing them is important, but shouldn’t we focus on the Dems?

How did the saboteurs that Sally mentions get there in the first place? How can we undermine them?
There is no solution for the short term, so let’s attack the long term.
If we are to cope with the future, which includes climate disruption, we have better start taking back politics now.

Personally, I am still learning about the politics of my new country, but I want to join one of the major political parties and get an idea of the environment and the possibilities.

Thank you for highlighting my point how you’re not willing to think a little past the obvious. If you’re not willing to address the issues that cause people who do care to give up, then you’re not helping (in this regard, I do respect all the other things you mentioned you do).

He “showed up”? You mean he voted?

Yup, and that is the absolute minimum anyone can do. And yet, there are a lot of people out there that aren’t doing that. And while there are a lot of people who are trying to vote and getting screwed, there’s a lot that are also not voting because they think it just doesn’t matter, or they can’t be bothered.

@Tony! The Queer Shoop

Gee, thanks for being a condescending twit who presumes to know what people here do in meatspace. You don’t have the first clue, but you accuse people here not got getting out. You’re presumptuous and you’re wrong.

So where exactly did I make an assumption about what anyone does in meatspace? The thing you quoted from me specifically started: “Unless you’re out there…” because I don’t know what anyone is doing and I only want the rest of that to apply to people who aren’t already doing something.

And thanks for the casual little insult to top it off, that sure helped your argument a lot. Maybe next time try comprehension.

The ballot initiatives are an interesting feature of American elections. I’m curious of the scope of what could be put on them.
For example, could a ballot initiative be used to limit or fix gerrymandering in some way?

The ballot initiatives are an interesting feature of American elections. I’m curious of the scope of what could be put on them.
For example, could a ballot initiative be used to limit or fix gerrymandering in some way?

@throwaway, never proofreads, every post a gamble #132
Yes.
We let them do the shit they wanted.
We don’t deserve it, but it is our responsibility to change things.
It is up to we the people to change things.
Or are you waiting for someone else to fix things for you?
Wait, maybe you are waiting for those Republicans to suddenly realize their error and amend their ways.
Hey, since we’re there, why not hope that the corporate lobbies will cease seizing more and more power for the ultra-rich?
I’m sure that if we hope really really hard they will see the light.

@Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought #133
Sally is also responsible, as in “it is also in her hands”.
She’s also taking charge of such responsibility, no question about that.
I would like to see more people doing just like her, acknowledge the responsibility we have and act upon it.

This cleared, I assume that here there’s plenty of people that, like Sally, are putting real effort in the meatspace to try and make a difference.
I would really be interested, rather than arguing semantics, to hear what practical things an individual can do to take the burden of reclaiming our societies, possibly non-violent things.

One way seems to have a more active role in local politics in general.
Another is to actively support a good candidate.
What else?

How can each of us put effort to make a difference?
How do we convince others that they can make a difference?

The ballot initiatives are an interesting feature of American elections. I’m curious of the scope of what could be put on them.
For example, could a ballot initiative be used to limit or fix gerrymandering in some way?

Of course. Your next question Captain Oblivious?

Do you really have to be such a kneejerk asshole, Nerd? canadiansteve deserves the abuse he’s getting for his defense of Kevin Kehres, but he had a legitimate question about the intricacies of the US political system which, believe it or not, not everyone is familiar with (even within the country, never mind outside it).

As for the question, the answer is, it’s complicated. Every state has different rules about what can be put on the ballot, and how it can get there, and whether it’s binding or not. And as we saw with same-sex marriage in California, even referendums can be declared unconstitutional. So probably in some states a referendum could be crafted to limit gerrymandering (say, by creating a non-partisan body to draw up districts, or having all house seats allocated at-large). But there’s no national remedy.

Do you really have to be such a kneejerk asshole, Nerd? canadiansteve deserves the abuse he’s getting for his defense of Kevin Kehres, but he had a legitimate question about the intricacies of the US political system which, believe it or not, not everyone is familiar with (even within the country, never mind outside it).

What is the definition of referenda? A petition based (versus legislature based) ballot item. State constitutions an be amended. So it is a powerful tool.
Yes, I consider it a stupid question that could have been easily searched if someone wasn’t terminally lazy.

one of the biggest problems that is facing the political process in the United States is the issue of “VOTER FRAUD”. It is cloaked in the language of reason, justice and fairness. No one is allowed to doubt all the bold assertions or suggest any real in depth investigation.
It is steeped in paranoia it is the other who is trying to subvert our freedom! It amounts to the same thing as the pole tax.
it is one way to manipulate the vote because it is turn out that is the conservative’s most dangerous enemy and they know it hence the paranoia about the “lower classes and the Ngr’s and immigrants” who must be cheating. They will stop at nothing to subvert our country!
uncle frogy

Those of us from the South, already know the drill, or already have been drilled. Down here in Texas, Abbott and Patrick will continue to punch down on all the poor, minorities, immigrants, women, teachers, nonbelievers, LGBT, etc. All to allay the fears of Christian white people.

So to people , who haven’t lived in an area ruled by religious crazies and now will perhaps maybe they won’t be as quick to chortle at our misfortune and tell us to move. My other favorite is when they cite the Constitution as if we have forgotten the Establishment Clause. Must be nice to never have noticed that America has never in its history realized the ideals in the Constitution. When I am telling people about some brazen violation of the Establishment Clause here, and they say, “The Constitution!”, it sounds remarkably like let them eat cake to me. It is that out of touch with reality. As if saying Constitution is some kind of magic spell to wipe out what Christians do anyways here.

I also love (and by love I really mean loathe) when fiscally conservative non-believing Republicans and Libertarians interrupt any mention of doing something political about Church/State violations and call you a Statist. They have been the main ones, who sound off when Aron and me talk about voting although there has been an apathetic Liberal aspect to that too. On paper, all three of those groups agree that theocracy is bad. The GOPers (Not all but enough to be annoying) and Libertarians want that tax cut and resent people on welfare and believe being rich has something to do with righteousness. Theocratic politicians? For them the Constitution will take care of that, so they can enjoy their tax cut.

If you try to persuade people to vote apathetic liberals (again not most but enough to be annoying) get all pious on you like Christians, who exhort each other to pray in secret. “Don’t shame people into voting!” they say as they shame you for trying to persuade people to vote.

As you can tell, I am a bit pissed at what happened and the attitudes that contributed to it. By all means let’s keep talking and having meetings about theocratic overreach after the cat is already out of the bag. We can also keep consulting our dictionaries about what atheists do. The numbers say we are anemic voters, and none of the issues dear to us will matter to the powers that be until we do.

Lilandra, I live in the wrong country, but if more non-republicans attended the primaries maybe, just maybe you could punish the Dems who are too goddamn [CENSORED) to stand up for principles. I think David Frum said “the Republicans are afraid of their base, the Democrats despise theirs”
(also, see priceless Jon Stewart comment below)
‘
.
Jon Stewart describes Democratic Party’s midterm strategy as ‘D*ckless H. Chickensh*t’ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/jon-stewart-describes-democratic-partys-midterm-strategy-as-dckless-h-chickensht/
“It’s like Democrats came up with this plan to produce Springtime for Hitler. But only because they really thought it was a good f*cking play.”

Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls@139: That actually doesn’t make it obvious. At least not to me.

Firstly, I didn’t realise that ballot items were the equivalent of referenda.

Secondly, it isn’t at all obvious that this means it can change state constitutions. In Australia, for example, referenda are not binding on the politicians. There have been numerous cases where a referendum result was ignored; they are used in some cases as essentially equivalent to polling.

As a Western Australian resident, the most obvious case is that every few years we have a referendum to see whether or not we want daylight saving time. There has never in living memory been a case where this ever got a majority “yes” vote – but we end up getting it anyway, only for it to be removed as soon as the government changes.

I’m not saying this is a good thing mind you – merely pointing out that different countries have different rules, and I’m not so sure that the question was as stupid as you thought it was. Certainly I could have researched that myself, though.